Comcast vs our Internet. Round 22

Most of what I write has a clear positive message. I do not enjoy complaining just as I know others do not enjoy hearing complaints, so I tend to do as little of it as possible. As a word of warning, I am looking for the lesson in this story, what I can learn from it. So, I apologize in advance, if there is nothing positive for you to take away from it. Also it is a bit long and I just didn’t feel like splitting it up. So, here it is.

 

A few months ago, back in January, I wrote about what a wonderful internet provider Comcast is (http://lnk.to/oFc0m) . Since January, we have paid them over $1500 and our internet still does not work properly.

 

When we call in and talk to the tier 1 representatives, most of them have no idea what we are talking about. What they are trained to deal with is people who have no internet signal at all. We get asked to do things like make sure the cable modem has power and that all of our cables are connected properly. When we inform them that the problem isn’t whether or not we can connect to the internet, that the problem has something to do with lost packets, high ping times and signal degradation they start drooling and jiberring like their brains have been totally blown and are now oozing slowly out their earholes.

 

Each time, they want to walk us through this inane and completely useless set of steps that is designed to discover why you have no signal at all. Then once we finally get it through their heads that we do in fact have a signal, just that it is a crappy one, then they move on to asking whether or not we have a wired or a wireless network set up. When we tell them that our network is wireless, but that for testing purposes we have set up one computer that is hard wired and that it is getting the same results they latch on to the wireless portion of the conversation and then claim that they can’t help us troubleshoot because our network is wireless which they do not support. We could just lie to them and say its wired. But, then we would be lying.

The rest of this is really just more of the same. So if you are totally like TLDR, believe me I get it. It’s fine. But if you want to read the rest of the Comcast saga, click here to read on

The right vehicle

The world is full of different ways to get from place to place. For every different type of circumstance there is a different type of vehicle. In places with no roads you can ride a horse or take a bicycle. To get to and from school you could take a bus or ride in a car. If you want to go from Seattle to Miami you could take a bus, train or airplane. Every different type of vehicle has its good and bad points.  The key here though, is how much time do you want to spend getting from point A to point B?

There are many different ways you can make money as well. You can have a 9-5 office job. You can do contract work. Or you could sell watermelons by the side of the road, hold bake sales, auction off your junk, charge fees for any personal services you want to provide, or even extort money from others.

In order to be successful you are going to have to have a goal. How much money are you trying to make?  Any of the job ideas listed above can probably bring you to your goal. But they each work in totally different ways and will have different degrees of speed and success. The question, with each method, is how long is it going to take you to get from where you are financially to where you want to be?

Click here to read the rest

Now that that is outta the way

Yesterday, I kind of broke the ice by doing a little Hello World test post.  I am back today and looking around it seems like there haven’t been any explosions. There’s no broken glass and I don’t hear any women screaming or children moaning softly in despair. Since the world does not seem to have come to an end, I figure it’s safe to drop another post and then tomorrow I will again check for any apocalyptic results.

It has always been my opinion that the best way to make money is with some kind of program or system that pays out a residual over time, like the way musicians or movie stars do a task once and then get paid royalties forever. It has never been my way to work a “9-5” job. This is the way most of the world works. But it just doesn’t make any sense to me.  And while I was growing up my stepdad always told me that I should work smarter and not harder. But even so, he was always pushing me to be part of the 9-5 grind.  

For the past twenty years I have done a great number of different jobs, though I have never really stuck with any one position. Nothing really seems to fit. I just can’t make myself commit to it. The world is not the same place it was hundreds or even thousands of years ago. We, people, as a whole, do not need to get up at the crack of dawn and work tirelessly until sundown just to produce enough of whatever it is that
we make to eke out a living anymore.  The general eight hour a day 5 day a week rat race is no longer necessary.

Click here   to read the rest.